


Disillusion of Self

by Iocane



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-15
Updated: 2013-01-15
Packaged: 2017-11-25 14:30:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/639838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iocane/pseuds/Iocane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stackhouse knows something happened during the thirty eight minutes he was stuck in the event horizon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disillusion of Self

**Author's Note:**

> Moving my stuff over from Wraithbait ...

They say you're not supposed to feel the passage of time when you go through a wormhole. You're _demolecularized_ ; everything that you use to feel all in an atomic state; nerves, skin, brain. You really _shouldn't_ know how long you're in the wormhole.

But how do you dismantle a soul? Does the human spirit get shattered the way the body does when it passes through hyperspace?

Richard Stackhouse doesn't think so. As soon as he entered the event horizon, he became aware that something was wrong. His body wasn't there, but his spirit – that indefinable _thing_ that made him who he was – felt the wrongness of disassembly.

He wondered if this was what death felt like. Had he died? Was Dylan not fast enough with threading the needle? He felt ... suspended. His body was gone but his consciousness was still there.

It seemed like a lifetime.

When the lifetime ended, the world he came back to was different from the one he'd left. Lieutenant Ford was no longer leaning on Dylan's chair, urging speed and care.

Instead, Teyla Emmagan had her arms around a dead Major Sheppard, and Doctor McKay lay sprawled atop them, as if all three had fallen through the bulkhead door.

Richard clutched his P-90 as he watched the flurry of motion around them. He glanced across the cockpit of the jumper, locking eyes with the one other person who might understand. Dylan Markham met his searching gaze and simply nodded.

*  
**  
*

Later, once Sheppard was alive again, and Stackhouse knew what had happened, he went straight to his room. He felt off. He couldn't pinpoint it, but ever since he'd come through the other side of the event horizon, he felt out of sync with the world around him.

Even his own quarters felt wrong. He took only enough time to shower and change before fleeing his room, deciding to take a walk around the city.

An hour later, Stackhouse found himself at one of the upper balconies on the south east spire.

"Dylan," he said softly when he realized the balcony was already occupied.

"Richard." Markham nodded to the other man. 

Stackhouse saw the same thing now as he had seen in Markham's eyes in the puddle jumper – that same searching, lost look they had both worn earlier.

"Still feels like part of you is out there, doesn't it?" Dylan said into the night.

Stackhouse nodded. "Thirty eight minutes, half alive and half ... something else. Makes me want to go through again, see if I can't find whatever's missing.

"I don't think it was the same for the others," Markham said after a long, strangely comfortable silence.

"From what I heard after, Sheppard and Teyla were only there for a few minutes. Just a few seconds for McKay. And Sheppard was dead the whole time." That gave Richard the creeps but he tried not to think too hard about it.

"I was so scared when we came out of it, worried something in me was messed up because of how it all felt. Then you looked at me and ..." Markham smiled shyly. "I didn't feel messed up anymore."

Stackhouse nodded, not wanting to think about how endearing he found that shy smile. "Yeah. I thought I was dead, but when we came back it was like no time had passed, but I knew it had. I felt it."

Dylan nodded and Richard realized he was trying to put words to something that really couldn't be defined. Eventually he just shifted a little closer to the other man – seeking, perhaps, some of what was still missing.

He didn't feel quite so fractured around Dylan.

\- f i n -


End file.
